


Tried-and-True

by Akaihyou



Series: Primary Colors [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers Feels, Awesome Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Colored Pencils, Consent Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Dehumanization, Kittens, Memories, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Stress Balls, Surgery, Trust Issues, comic book medicine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-19 18:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaihyou/pseuds/Akaihyou
Summary: “You know chocolate is supposed to increase happiness?” Sam said to the room at large.The Winter Soldier knew how he felt didn’t really matter. If it would help him through the surgery, he’d do just about anything.“The sequence begins withapproval. Odobreniye.Does that word have another meaning for you?”(Buck recovers from one procedure and prepares for another. Steve’s self-awareness is a work in progress. Sam tries to keep everyone positive. Natasha is a gift. The rest of the Avengers do what they can.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Praise be to my dear beta ladra for sparing me her time and attention. All remaining errors are my own.
> 
> The last month, things just didn't come together, but I expect to get out this podfic in the next week or so. I'm trying to get back on track. We're almost over the hump of the story and onto material I've had written since about this time last year.

One thing the Winter Soldier would never let himself tell Stevie was how much energy it cost him to behave as if he could really trust. He’d _told_ himself that he trusted Stevie and his friends, but really, Buck knew it was fear and exhaustion and the torturous restraint of hope that kept him as cooperative as he was.

It took the soldier days to regain the psychological ground lost during the arm’s repair. Tony Stark was a genius who had proven himself compassionate and generous and yet the dread of him had not abated, had in fact grown worse. The soldier would avoid him if he could.

How strange it was to feel like he was trapped behind his eyes again, like he didn’t dare be anything that could be noticed. A ghost not even his own.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d stopped feeling like that until he was walling himself in again.

The soldier had been weak. Weak and frightened enough to reach for the comfort that Stevie represented, that Stevie had offered. So he had taken it. And now, although he was trying his best, he couldn't quite bring himself to increase the distance between them again.

Fortunately, Stevie was giving him space. And space, this time, did not mean avoidance, only that Stevie did not press him to interact, so it was increasingly comfortable to be in the same room as his friend even if they did not speak or directly acknowledge each other’s presence. This was a problem, the Winter Soldier was aware.

He tried not to think that things couldn’t continue like this, though it was in the back of his mind and too often in the forefront. Instead he ordered himself to endure through closer easier objectives.

Dinner.

The next morning.

The next week.

The next planned repairs, which was, to say, the surgery.

There’d never been any question in the soldier’s mind that he would do what they wanted, so of course he’d given his consent for the procedure, for whatever his consent was worth. Doing so at least bought him another few days before having to meet another stranger to sign the Power of Attorney paperwork. Vi had been pleased, but also had to share the news that her review of his records suggested he was in even worse physical condition than he had been aware of.

Stevie hadn’t reacted well to either evidence or conclusion, though he must have known this discussion was coming.

Visible to them on the video feed, the surgeon had raised a quelling hand and reconfirmed. “I’m afraid so. Accounting for muscle density and the absence of one arm, he’s significantly underweight. The effect of the serum should be far more noticeable in terms of sheer mass. The records show the Russians kept him in better condition,” she’d said, almost snapping, though she subsided at once upon registering how warily Buck watched her, “and better condition is considerably bulkier than your current state, Buck.” She directed her final words at the soldier, who could do nothing but nod.

The Russians, even in Siberia, had been prepared to send him out into a frozen landscape to fend for himself for days or sometimes weeks. They’d made certain he had reserves. Buck didn’t have the muscle or fat stores he used to be able to rely on for those missions. American HYDRA had wanted their Asset to look and act and be a certain way, and if it compromised the Winter Soldier’s endurance a little, that only benefited his handlers.

She’d given him explicit objectives to meet. “I’d like to see you gain back at least ten pounds before I do any work on you, fifteen would be ideal, but difficult to manage in a healthy way,” she’d told him.

The soldier had nodded. “Understood,” he’d said. Barring the occasional negative reaction, eating was not difficult now. Given new guidance, he could raise his caloric intake to meet her requirements.

If he hadn’t been so resigned to the experimental shit, he might have objected to her proposal of tantalum-vibranium alloy via atomic layer deposition to replace the damaged reinforcement in his left knee. However, the soldier agreed with Vi’s assessment. There was no simply redoing what HYDRA had done. ALD was the best option for long-term strength and stability.

But it would hurt. It was going to hurt. A lot.

And while he would endure and wouldn’t hide or try to escape, he really wasn’t looking forward to it.

The thing was, Buck could see why Stevie had said what he’d said. It wasn’t like Stevie was really that dumb. He knew damn well that surgery hurt. He’d seen the Winter Soldier grow agitated and had panicked. That was all. The soldier’s emotional response was irrational. Handl— _friends_ , made honest mistakes. Stevie hadn’t meant to lie, to deceive him. He hadn’t chosen to raise the soldier’s hopes just to crush them later.

It still stung.

He could tell himself whatever he wanted. It still felt like a… not a betrayal exactly, but a breach of trust.

It still made the soldier question Stevie’s reassurances, made him wonder if Stevie meant the things he said or if he was just _handling_ him. Saying what he felt was necessary to sooth Buck’s irrational emotional responses.

He was unstable, after all.

“It’s alright, soldat,” Natasha had rasped at him the day after, when his eyes kept returning to the blue purple marks on her neck.

And maybe it was, for her. But Buck wasn’t about to give himself another chance to get close and hurt her. He wasn’t sure which impulse was a better indication of how compromised he was and he didn’t care.

It seemed to him that Natalia hadn’t lost anything useful of the Black Widow, even with the path she’d ended up taking to SHIELD and the Avengers. The way she’d handled Vi had mostly likely been unnecessary, but Natasha was still so _good_. The soldier didn't think Stevie had the slightest idea, really. Stevie had always been a heat of the moment kind of guy when it came right down to it. Natasha, though, he knew was always planning, analyzing, calculating, assessing and reassessing. Impatience and disinterest were a valid tactic to make someone want to tell a story. Stevie, even unaware, had played right into it. Just as Natalia had planned. He was so irrationally proud of her.

It had still been a mistake to let himself rest in her presence. He didn't doubt that he would pay for it eventually, just as he had paid for Stevie’s continued company. The nonverbal comfort the soldier had so desperately clung to while his arm was returned to working order. He couldn’t give it up. It was a problem. He would pay for it. He was still unstable, erratic. It was going to hurt. It was necessary. He shouldn’t want things, take comfort from people. It was a problem. He would. He.

Another stress ball burst in his right hand. The abrupt sensation of the gel oozing through his fingers helped break the cycle he’d barely caught himself falling into.

It was strange to have nothing but downtime at present. He didn’t think he’d ever gone so long without someone else giving him a mission. The mission he’d given himself? Well, he thought he was doing the best he could for the moment.

The first few nights during which the worst the soldier had to worry about was jostling his knee were, despite everything stirred up by the repair process, shockingly easy and gentle. The day after Tony Stark repaired his arm, Natasha even accompanied him to the basement range he’d frequented with Hawkeye. She knew him better than either of them remembered and she’d been aware, even when he hadn’t, that he wouldn’t be able to fully trust the arm until he’d had the chance to shoot with it.

He’d started going through the box that had arrived for him earlier in the week. So far, the memories prompted by the contents were generally those of his time with the Department, but  few of them had been traumatic. He’d sketched some of them out and scribbled notes for others. Still, he was highly aware of the way he’d been avoiding the most important artifact.

At some point, he knew he’d have to face whatever had been on the microcassette Vi had brought to the tower.

He had a strong suspicion of what might be on it, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about those suspicions. In the end, however, the Winter Soldier knew how he felt didn’t really matter. If it would help him through the surgery, he’d do just about anything. Still, he knew he needed to test his reaction beforehand. He wasn’t sure how to bring it up to Stevie, but he supposed he’d just wait for an appropriate opportunity.

Overall, things _were_ looking up. Stevie was smiling more, was—though the fact left the Winter Soldier with very mixed emotions—leaving the tower regularly and coming back like he’d shed some of the weight he was carrying. That was a positive sign.

Additionally, the Avengers and JARVIS continued to ply the soldier with food on Vi’s orders. He’d put on a little over one and a third kilograms already, though he knew that wasn’t quite as much progress as she might wish. He would have to better account for the simultaneous increase in exercise in the gym with Natalia or Sam. He wasn’t used to needing to regulate these things for himself but he would learn.

Yes, things were looking up.

And the Winter Soldier did not trust that to continue. At all.

 

* * *

 

The morning of the soldier’s fourth day with a newly functional arm, he woke early and made breakfast. As he had been the last few days, he was in the gym with Natasha before Stevie got up. Having the use of two arms came with enormous advantages. Exercising with his metal arm wasn’t quite the same as exercising with his natural arm, but it was close. He couldn’t condition the prosthetic itself, exactly, but all the muscles that were still connected to and affected by the metal in him benefited.

Or were aggravated. That happened too.

But, on the whole, it was a good idea and what damage he did himself was so minor and quickly healed that the soldier only noticed now because of the period during which it hadn’t been happening.

Low sensation threshold. High sensation tolerance. One of the many ways the serum was a mixed blessing.

_Stevie: Out with Sam. I’ll be back for lunch._

Buck texted him back with his right thumb, continuing his modified pushups with his left. He was using the bosu ball, just out of curiosity. Natasha had demonstrated its utility and assured him that no one would mind. It was, as the soldier had previously deduced, intended primarily for stability exercises.

_Me: Thank you_

After a moment’s hesitation, Buck added a bright yellow smiley face to the message and sent it before he could second-guess himself.

Stevie not being back until lunch meant the soldier was on his own for food between now and then. It also meant that Stevie might be engaging in whatever had made such an improvement. If Buck could find a way to ask what it was that Stevie was doing, maybe Buck could try it too.

He finished his set and took a long drink from the bottle of probiotic enriched juice drink Natasha had given him. The flavor reminded him of (and every so often, the fact that the soldier had enough memory to make these sorts of connections just kinda struck him all over again) the nutrition drinks he’d consumed on his first days at the tower. He hadn’t formed an opinion on them, except that they were meant to be beneficial to his health and he knew he needed to take every opportunity to increase his caloric intake.

His phone buzzed at him.

_Sam: On a scale of 1 to 10, one being high aversion and 10 being highly acceptable, how would you rank cake?_

Before Buck had time to properly process the request, there came another message.

_Sam: Chocolate cake_

A photograph followed.

The soldier considered the photo and the task. The scale was thoughtful of Sam. Preferences were hard, though not as hard as they had been, to articulate. Knowing what he wanted— _that_ he wanted—didn’t mean he’d be able to communicate the preference.

There were no negative associations coming up. Chocolate was a most acceptable flavor.

_Me: 8,_ he sent.

However much he tried not to anticipate, he didn’t expect the question to be idle curiosity.

Cautiously, the Winter Soldier let himself hope that there would be actual chocolate cake. Courtesy of Stark, he hadn’t actually had any cake that wasn’t peanut-themed yet.

Sam sent him back a thumbs-up. Buck dithered over his emoji options, uncertain of the appropriate response, but eventually decided additional communication was unnecessary.

 

* * *

 

There was cake. He and Stevie demolished most of it while Sam and Natasha ate their single slices and looked on in horrified fascination and amused relief respectively. A couple slices had been taken out and set aside in the refrigerator, presumably for Stark and Banner.

“You know chocolate is supposed to increase happiness?” Sam said to the room at large.

It didn't sound like a real question, but the soldier shook his head just in case. News to him. Then again, for decades the people around him hadn’t really been encouraging his _happiness_. Unless it was happiness to comply, but he didn’t think that type of happiness was what Sam was referring to.

"So, the way I figure, it's good for you. Doesn't hurt that both of you could use the calories.”

Stevie grinned and licked frosting off the tines of his fork. “Thanks, Sam. Every once in a while I still get hit by this guilt for eating so much sugar—blame rationing—so it’s nice to have an excuse. And yeah, if it works, I could use a boost.”

There was a pause. Cautiously, the soldier raised his head to scan expressions.

“What?” Stevie demanded.

“Nothing, man,” Sam said quickly, but the soldier identified clear relaxation in his body language and something about Natalia’s smile was sly and satisfied. “It’s just good to sit and talk over cake.”

Blond eyebrows drew together.

“Don’t worry about it, Stevie,” Natasha told him. “We’re just happy.”

Smiling uncertainly, Stevie said, “I guess it’s working then?”

Laughing a little, Sam said, “Sure. You just gotta let it.”

The soldier had the distinct impression they weren’t talking about the cake anymore.

 

* * *

 

In the gap of time between then and dinner, Buck took out a sheet of pale pink paper and the pastels and carefully drew Stevie eating the chocolate cake. He had to blend black and browns to get the right color for the chocolate. Chocolate cake was not actually chocolate brown.

Although he hesitated over the red highlights the image in his mind demanded, he added them in the end and the illustration was better, richer, for it.

He thought of the paper bag of replacement pencils, the red of Natasha’s hair.

Yes, sometimes red was needed. Red could be necessary.

They relocated to the common floor before dinner. Buck took the colored pencils with him and Stevie put on another episode of kittens for background noise and became engrossed in something on his tablet. The kittens in this episode came in shades that were called red or silver. The Abyssinians’ mother looked like a miniature mountain lion with pointier ears.

Buck spent a while contemplating 191 Pompeiian Red and 271 Warm Gray II before settling down to sketch out a litter of kittens piled into a soft cream lambskin basket. It was nice not to think beyond those soft shapes for a little while.

 

* * *

 

Natasha brought them half a dozen different pasta dishes for dinner. She opened the boxes and explained their contents to Buck as Stevie set out plates. “Macaroni and cheese for you, Stevie. The chicken marsala is mine, but you’re both welcome to try it. Pad thai seems right up your alley, soldat. I had them leave the lime wedges on the side. The others are gnocchi with browned butter, parmesan and parsley, beef stroganoff over linguine, and the fettuccine alfredo from the same place Clint likes to get pizza since we already know that one’s a hit.”

The pad thai _was_ excellent, topped with chopped peanuts, fresh cilantro and crisp bean sprouts. Natalia smiled at his enthusiasm and suggested he sniff the lime wedges between bites. Tentatively, he smiled back and tried her suggestion. He knew he wasn’t getting the full effect and let himself be disappointed that the acid would be too much. Even more disappointing, the pad thai was gone too soon. Still hungry, the soldier ate most of the alfredo and a good portion of the gnocchi.

“You okay?” Stevie said after they were done eating. “I don’t think I’ve really heard your voice all day.”

When Buck just looked at him, he hurried to reassure: “I mean, that’s fine, if you don’t want to talk. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I just. If there’s anything… Dammit, I’m sorry, Buck. I don’t want to make you feel pressured, but I—” He cut himself off, transparently frustrated.

It seemed as good a cue as any. The Winter Soldier steeled himself for a negative reaction and gathered his words. "I want," he said carefully, making himself look directly at Stevie, "to hear the recording. The”—the precise word in English went of out of his head—“little tape."

Relief and uncertainty warred on Stevie’s face. "You sure that's a good idea, Buck? Anything could be on there."

Puzzled, Buck tilted his head in Natasha's direction. "I thought…" He shook his head and had to finish in Russian, "you haven't listened?"

Her mouth quirked in an approximation of a smile. Responding in the same language, she said, "I will now, soldier. If you're sure."

Buck nodded as decisively as he was able before shifting his eyes back toward Stevie's face. The English term eluded him but when he went to type it out, the phone, or maybe JARVIS, he wasn't sure, autofilled it for him. _Precautions?_

“He’s right, Stevie,” said Natasha. “I know his programming includes codes I wouldn’t recognize if I heard them.”

Stevie drew in a long breath through his teeth. "Yeah, Buck,” he said, nodding, grim and determined. “We can do that. I'll ask Bruce if we can borrow his room."

 

* * *

 

About an hour later, Natasha came back to take him to the Hulk’s room. With her she brought the silver player with the microcassette and a pair of earbuds. Stevie didn’t question where they were going.

“I told you you were a person,” she said, matter-of-factly reminding him of her words to him in DC. “Not the person you were before or after, but a person. You had people who cared for you, if you can trust in such things. I don’t. The precautions are wise.” She set the player on the kitchen table. “There are a few personal messages before a 10-word code sequence, but I didn’t hear anything overt apart from that single sequence. I won’t speak the final word in case it has effects on its own, but the sequence begins with _approval_. _Odobreniye_. Does that word have another meaning for you?”

The player was heavier than it looked. “Favor,” said the soldier, turning the device over in his hands. “They didn’t have to let me rest on missions.”

“Didn’t they?” The words were mild, but pointed. “You passed out on top of your team.”

Startled, the soldier stared at her until his brain caught up. “That was…mentioned on the recording?”

Half-smiling, she nodded. “The name… Zasha. It doesn’t come from Winter Soldier.”

Buck shook his head, pulling threads of memory together and finding new meaning. “When the team first decided on a name for me, I actually asked if it came from Sarah.”

They’d laughed at him for the question. _No, people’s defender. Maybe from Alexander._ Back then, the soldier didn’t think he’d even known Pierce. He didn’t think the American faction had had much to do with him, apart from Zola’s tinkering. Lukin had been an Aleksander, but he didn’t think they’d taken the name from him either.

_His mother's name was Sarah_ , the Winter Soldier had thought. At the time, he hadn’t known who the _he_ was.

Natasha’s lips twitched at him but he could tell she was sad. “You should tell Stevie.”

The soldier’s ever-present headache spiked as he again shook his head. He swallowed, tasting the chocolate cake again. _No story for him_ , he signed. Not when Buck himself barely had context or comprehension. _Sad._

She raised an eyebrow. “You know he’d like to be here for you.”

Damn. He’d answered the wrong question. She’d clearly thought he’d misunderstood deliberately, but he didn’t _think_ he had.

He tried again. “I don’t want him to see me like that again,” he explained, carefully sidestepping his other reasons for discomfort with the idea, “if there’s anything to see.”

The Hulk room was mostly bare. What it did contain was soft and bright. He couldn’t look at his surroundings for long without wanting to squeeze his eyes shut. He picked a bright purple cushion and sat against the wall opposite the door.

“You should clear the room,” he told her. “I remember the beginning of the sequence, but I have only the word of others that it makes me sleep.”

After a moment’s careful regard, she nodded to him and retreated. The door slid shut.

The soldier drew a shaky breath and leaned over his knees. “JARVIS?” he called, anxious for the AI’s presence to be confirmed. While he didn’t want Stevie watching now, neither did he wish to be locked in alone.

“I am here, Buck.”

Inordinately relieved, Buck exhaled slowly and put his back against the wall.

The soldier sat there for a few minutes, feeling the weight of the device in his hands. Then, once he was as calm as he thought he could get, trapped like this, he carefully put in the earbuds. He depressed the silver button marked with the little black triangle. Initially, he heard nothing and worried for the instant before he remembered cassettes like this had a clear section at each end before the magnetic tape for audio began. No sooner had he let go that anxiety than there came a muffled click-pop followed by the soft white-noise hiss of recorded silence.

The soldier waited and a voice spoke to him out of the past.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were tears on the soldier’s face when he woke. He was ravenously hungry and his mouth tasted like new carpet. 
> 
> “Did I… do anything else?” Buck couldn’t clearly remember anything since the recording had started.
> 
> (Buck wakes up. JARVIS assesses the effects of the code sequence. Steve tries not to push. Dr. Cho becomes involved. Natasha plans.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been over a month. I've been dealing with some stuff. 
> 
> This chapter is short, but I wanted to get something out because I know readers have been waiting.

There were tears on the soldier’s face when he woke. He was ravenously hungry and his mouth tasted like new carpet. New carpet was not much less disgusting than old carpet, just less complex.

He didn’t remember how he knew what old carpet tasted like. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. “JARVIS? Time?” he croaked.

“11:31 PM, Buck,” JARVIS answered promptly, giving him his name as well. “You were out for approximately four hours, though you did not appear to experience a natural sleep cycle.” A pause. “The frequency of Stevie’s repeated requests for your status has increased dramatically over the last hour. Shall I let him know you are now awake? You missed your late dinner. As a consequence, you ought to eat something. You are currently approximately two thousand calories short of your daily target.”

“Did I… do anything else?” Buck couldn’t clearly remember anything since the recording had started. He did feel refreshed. A degree of fuzzy exhaustion had lifted and now he could put together information he hadn’t been able to or simply hadn’t had before.

The thing about his memory was that it didn't often stack up conveniently. It didn’t sort and categorize itself. He had a box of puzzle pieces. Just because so many of them were virtually identical didn’t mean he knew where they belonged in the picture. He was missing a lot of pieces too, like however he knew the flavor of carpet. He doubted he’d ever have all the pieces to put together. Some of his memories were better off staying lost, either buried in the blizzard of his mind or burned out by electricity.

What really struck him was the mundanity of it all. For every second the soldier spent pulling a trigger or wielding a knife, he had spent hours waiting. For orders, for clearance or confirmation, for extraction, for pain to begin or end. Waiting.

The daily grind.

Buck had experienced a hell of a lot of traumatic experiences and violence in his long existence, more than he knew he was aware of. But, like the memories from before, the majority of what he remembered was the relatively quiet in-between time. He remembered waiting. Always waiting. It was a fact of life in any military or quasi-military in general. The hurry up and wait hadn't changed one bit since Buck had first gone off to war.

So when Vi Kaminska had described, for instance, the Lithuanian girl, he wasn't surprised that he remembered some of the surrounding events and didn't remember her directly.

Not so with the voices on the tape. He didn’t remember anything of the words with clarity. With them, he remembered _who_ much better than _what._ Continuity explained that well enough. For as long as they’d trusted him to work with a partner or team, those people had been the most important people in the soldier’s world. He supposed that explained Natalia as well. They’d been occasional mission partners for a very long time and he’d recovered memories of her quickly, sometimes without any prompting. Something had happened, maybe multiple somethings had happened, to convince them that he could no longer be trusted to work closely with other assets. Zory Yakovich’s escape, for sure. Perhaps he’d had some impact on Natalia’s choices as well. He didn’t know quite when or how she’d left the Red Room or what she’d done immediately after, only that she hadn’t defected directly to SHIELD.

Thinking about the personal messages on the microcassette was difficult. Buck wasn’t ready to process them. The first seemed to have been recorded not long after Zory had left him on the side of the road with a disabled car in Czechoslovakia.

The last was the voice of a much older man, though still recognizable.

The one in the middle he couldn’t think about yet. He’d thought he understood. It seemed he’d missed some things.

“No, Buck,” JARVIS assured him. “Accessible data indicates you entered a hypnotic state by the sixth word and fell into a deep trance after the tenth. You did not dream, though there is similarity between a hypnotic state and REM sleep.”

“Is that a state that could endure through surgery?” he asked.

There was a pause. Buck doubted the AI actually needed the processing time. More likely, JARVIS was giving him time to think.

“I cannot speculate in your case. However, hypnosis has been shown to serve in place of anaesthetic drugs.”

Buck absorbed this. “It’s possible, then.”

A longer pause. “Yes, Buck. So it would seem.”

It should have been good news and yet… While JARVIS’s assessment removed some of his dread, it also granted a sense of immediacy to the procedure which turned something in his gut to lead and ice. Buck squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his face. “Thank you, JARVIS. Please let Stevie know I’m done?”

“Of course, Buck.”

 

* * *

 

 

It was obvious that Stevie, when he arrived, was absolutely desperate to ask questions. The soldier watched the relief bloom on his face and spread through his body language as he looked him up and down.

In the end, however, all Stevie said was, "I'm glad.” What he was glad of, he didn't say. Buck appreciated his restraint.

Stevie joined him for what turned out to be less of a snack and more of a midnight meal of something Buck paid little attention to apart from vaguely noticing that it involved chicken with a rice base and didn't cause him pain or nausea.

It occurred to him as he was washing his face that he hadn't asked JARVIS if the hypnotic state had ended when he woke, though he doubted the AI would have permitted him to leave with Stevie had it persisted. He would know if he was still affected, wouldn't he? Or perhaps not. Maybe active programming was active programming no matter how it had been activated or for how long. He might not know until he ran into an obvious effect. Somehow, this concern had not occurred to him prior to conducting his test of the sleep codes.

_What the hell am I doing here with him?_ He didn’t have an answer for himself. He knew getting close to Steve was dangerous and still was unable to make himself avoid him again. This was a problem, he knew. It wasn't safe. It wasn't safe for Stevie to have him here. He wasn't safe.

And if it sometimes _felt_ like it might be, that was the most dangerous part of all.

 

* * *

 

Vi called the next evening to obtain Buck's consent to share his records and information about the planned procedure with one Helen Cho, who he knew had to be another doctor but tried not to think too much about.

The enthusiasm Vi exhibited over working with Helen Cho left him deeply uncomfortable. Clearly she was not quite as unaffected by the opportunity to push the boundaries of current medical science as she had intimated in her first conversations with Stevie.

Committed now as he was, Buck would continue to cooperate, but he wasn't sure how to feel—other than terrified—about the new addition, even as everyone around him continued to assure him that having the both of them work together on him was the best possible option.

The way she described it to him a few days later, Vi would deal with the old reinforcement and she and Cho together, possibly with Tony Stark, would implement and monitor the twin processes of the tantalum-vibranium ALD and his tissue regeneration.

In another week, they would have data from trying the process on the "built" tissue Cho was working with. Apparently, it was the alloy they wanted to use which remained the unproven component.

Buck was uncertain whether he should find this comforting or not. He didn’t suppose there was much chance anything they did would actually kill him. Nothing had yet. All the same, he didn’t _want_ to be anyone’s experiment again. Not even if it helped him.

They were all correct. The soldier did need to be able to move without issue. It didn’t matter in the end if the sleep sequence could keep him under or not. Pain was part of his existence. Pain was something he could and had and _would_ endure. He didn’t.... He didn’t _like_ it. Even when it was acceptable, he didn’t like it.

But Stevie wanted him to go through with it and so he would.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, he went to the gym with Natalia again. By now, he had a number of circuits worked out. It felt something like a routine. It was comfortable to have a routine. Routines were a risk as well, but he saw more benefit than risk at the moment. Anyway, it wasn’t like he had many options. He went where the others in the tower could watch him.

The gym was as acceptable a destination to him as it was to Natasha.

"I blew all my covers when we took down SHIELD," she told him. She made it sound like they’d been on the same side of that operation. Considering that she’d been on his target list, he didn’t think that was correct. He did, however, appreciate her intention.

The soldier turned his head slightly to look at her. She was standing in the middle of the highest of the bars, feet spaced and planted, arms at her sides.

It wasn't possible for Buck to do that. His center of gravity was different. He’d have to crouch and balance his weight to account for the heaviness of his left side.

_You’re leaving_ , he signed and knew it to be true. He wondered fleetingly if she would join Clint Barton, wherever he was now.

She looked at him for a long time. The soldier waited her out, refusing to let the silence draw a response from him.

“I’ll wait until you’re a little less vulnerable,” she said at last. “Until you can run, if you have to. Protect yourself more effectively.”

He looked back at her, the balancing act she was performing. The one he couldn’t.

“Thank you, Natasha,” said Buck.

She smiled.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The week crawled by, blurred by general anxiety and exhaustion and punctuated with moments of high stress and panic or jarring pleasure and comfort.
> 
> Stevie was there to socialize the kittens. The soldier wasn’t capable. He needed more socialization himself.
> 
>  
> 
> _Sam: But today it’s too much and that’s okay, Buck. There’s nothing wrong with needing a break._
> 
>  
> 
> (Buck’s knee surgery looms closer while he struggles with memories. Steve tries to help. There are kittens. Sam conspires with Buck. Natasha shares a secret.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay.
> 
> Quick chapter warning for non-graphic implied/referenced past waterboarding. Also, I added a character tag for Tony.
> 
> My beta, ladra, is amazing as always. Many thanks.

The week crawled by, blurred by general anxiety and exhaustion and punctuated with moments of high stress and panic or jarring pleasure and comfort.

Pepper Potts, a person Buck had never met but found himself increasingly amazed by, produced a lawyer and a witness so Buck could sign the Medical Power of Attorney paperwork for Stevie. Buck made sure his arm was covered and his hair hid most of his face and did nothing but nod in response to their introductions.

He told them he was signing of his own free will, a statement he had practiced for days in the projection room and still felt like nonsense nine times out of ten, and scribbled something on the indicated lines that his hands knew but his brain wouldn't let him think about or look at after.

Stevie, who was under no such restrictions, looked at the paper, closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled. The soldier focused on his gloved hands in his lap and waited for the other people in the room to finish talking or give him another command. There were no more commands. He’d fulfilled his purpose here, completed his task, and could sit quietly until everything was over.

When they were done, the strangers gone and the room empty and safe enough for Buck to raise his eyes again, Stevie’s face looked like it might either shatter or crack in half.

Buck didn’t want to know what that meant but tentatively interpreted the reaction as positive.

Once they were back on their floor, Stevie said, "Thank you, Buck. It means a lot and I know that was hard."

Buck couldn't find any words. He nodded slowly and retreated to the projection room.

Stevie's face fell, but he let him go. He always let him go. No recent experience gave Buck reason to believe he’d be prevented from leaving his presence but he always half-expected a different reaction.

He didn't work on anything except sitting and keeping his breathing regular for a long time after. The soldier felt strangely guilty about his retreat.

 

* * *

 

There was no flour in egg custard. Buck had finished making breakfast but he’d been awake even earlier than usual and had more than an hour and a half before Natalia had said she would arrive to take him to the gym with her. Eggs and milk were already on the counter. Sugar, salt, spices. Something about Stevie and nutmeg. He couldn’t remember enough. Avoid, include, he didn’t know. Maybe it would come to him before he finished. If not, better to avoid.

Real vanilla. Paste, not extract.

Buck was pondering what to do with it when Stevie came stumbling out of his bedroom.

“Mornin’, Buck,” he mumbled and dropped onto a kitchen stool to put his head in his hands. “You’re up early. Me too, I ‘spose. Rough night?”

Buck shrugged. It was good to be able to do that again, now that he could move both shoulders comfortably. “Good morning, Stevie.” He could relax a little now that the script had been followed correctly.

Stevie nodded and rubbed at his forehead.

“Custard,” Buck said, trying to ask the question with his expression when more English wouldn’t come.

“You’re making custard, Buck?” Stevie perked up and lifted his head.

Asking questions was acceptable. He’d been told that. All he had to do was make himself ask.

“Nutmeg,” he said. It came out without inflection.

A hopeful smile from Stevie. “Yeah, extra nutmeg. You remembered that?”

He didn’t know. He shrugged again. A shrug wasn’t a lie and it wouldn’t disappoint his friend.

“Can I help?”

Buck couldn’t have said no if he’d tried.

They burned the first batch. Natasha arrived in time to make them throw it out.

“This isn’t the Depression, boys,” she said. “And I want some too now and I don’t like it burned.”

 _Want. Don’t like._ She said that so easily. It gave Buck hope for himself.

 

* * *

 

“We’re creating a kitten socialization room in the tower to reduce employee stress levels,” said Tony Stark’s voice over Stevie’s phone that evening.

“Uh… Okay?” Stevie sounded puzzled.

Buck wasn’t trying to eavesdrop but the combination of enhanced hearing and the keyword _kitten_ meant he didn’t have to try.

He set down the 185 Naples Yellow pencil he’d been using to add color to a streetlight over a park bench and picked up 157 Dark Indigo again.

What would it be like to watch kittens that weren’t on a screen? They were so tiny and fragile he couldn’t imagine being allowed to touch them. They could be hurt or frightened far too easily.

“Yeah, well, after the HYDRA purge, we still haven’t filled all those open positions because the background checks are taking forever. Can’t rely on JARVIS for everything. So kittens. Everybody loves kittens. Cats are assholes but kittens are… anyway, Pep talked to a shelter about fostering a litter for socialization purposes, save them money and space, get them all adopted, everybody wins.”

“And you’re telling me this, why, Tony?” Stevie asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Eight cute little fuzzballs on the eighth floor. Thought you might want to see them before we open it up tomorrow.”

“Oh,” said Stevie. “That’s, uh, thank you, Tony.”

“ _Don’t_ mention it,” was the response and the call ended.

 

* * *

 

Buck hadn’t let himself believe he’d be permitted to go to the eighth floor with Stevie. But there he was, trying to be invisible between a pair of cat towers. Stevie was there to socialize the kittens. The soldier wasn’t capable. He needed more socialization himself.

JARVIS had sent the volunteer from the shelter who was there to settle the kittens into their new accommodations out on a break.

“Were kittens always this small?” Stevie wondered, letting a pale gray kitten chew on his thumb and kick at his wrist. He was getting a little scratched, but the kittens’ claws were all clipped and filed so they couldn’t do serious damage. “I think this one’s Misty.” They were all named for weather conditions, according to the poster on the wall. It provided photos and basic information about the kittens. “She’s so cute.”

“You were smaller,” said Buck. He wasn’t sure if that was a slip or simply the answer to Stevie’s question. An answer might not have been required, but he knew Stevie was happier when Buck spoke.

“Yeah,” said his friend and Buck wanted to hide from his happy nostalgic smile. “I was. Aww, look at them all.”

The soldier complied. There was no reason not to and the kittens _were_ very cute.

Misty, Sunny, Snowy, Cloudy, Breezy, Rainy, Stormy, and AC. AC must have been the last one named. He didn’t think air conditioning could be considered weather.

“Sunny’s the peach one. Breezy and Cloudy are the other grays. Snowy is the one that’s most white. Rainy, Stormy and AC are the tabbies,” Stevie said, as if Buck couldn’t read the poster himself. “I think Stormy and AC are the ones investigating your boots, Buck.”

He’d been trying not to think about the tiny vulnerable creatures by his feet. He looked down and froze. Stormy was rubbing her face on the toe of his right boot and AC was pawing at the laces, hooking them with his claws and watching them snap back before he could get his teeth around them.

Buck swallowed hard. He had a fair idea of what his boots must smell and taste of and they didn’t belong anywhere near innocent kittens. He should have come barefoot.

“Buck? Do you need them away from you?”

He shook his head. Too late now and if he moved, they might get hurt. There was a mew from closer and he turned his head to find Sunny and Snowy had climbed one of the towers and were eying him like their next challenge.

Sunny leapt at him.

Buck caught the kitten reflexively with his right hand. His left was too hard.

Ignoring the protesting mews, he put the kitten back down. His heart was pounding.

Stevie was watching him with concern. Concern never turned out well for anyone.

It didn’t take long for Stevie to gather the kittens back up and put them in their smaller enclosure. Not a cage. There were no cages. The tower itself was a cage. There was no need for cages inside.

He followed Stevie back to their own smaller enclosure and shut himself in the projector room.

 

* * *

 

It was worse, the soldier reflected, perhaps, to know what was coming. He'd never known the details of procedures ahead of time before and it was hard to say whether he regretted the amount of detail Vi had given him. He was certain he would have reacted badly, dangerously, to having the information sprung on him. So perhaps that was a wash. He had let himself be weak while Tony Stark worked on his arm. He didn’t think he would have any such outlet during his knee surgery. He wasn’t too sure the ALD element, which was what bothered him most, should be called surgery. It was experimental.

There was a definite link between Buck’s new experiences and the memories he recovered. Fragments and nightmarish flashes of medical procedures and experiments without any attempt at pain relief for the Asset. Seeing bits of himself laid out or opened up that no living thing should ever live through seeing. The casual cruelty and callous indifference of the whitecoats.

It wouldn’t be like that this time. It wouldn’t. Vi wouldn’t treat him like that. Tony Stark hadn’t, despite clearly believing the Winter Soldier had killed his parents.

At least once with HYDRA, he remembered strapping himself to the operation table in return for not much more than a pat on the head by a hand which was quickly re-sterilized and covered by a disposable glove.

He should be desperate for Stevie’s affection. He was.

But the Winter Soldier was stronger than that.

Hoping to get at least one horror out of his head, Buck found the darkest gray among the pastel paper options and sketched out the halogen-bleached form of Zola leaning over him.

In the memory, something red and white and wet was reflected in Zola’s small round glasses. Buck barely touched the red he had selected to the paper before he needed to bolt for the bathroom, where he retched over the toilet bowl and didn't realize he had damaged his knee again until first JARVIS and then Stevie's concerned voices broke through the scream in his head and became language more than noise.

He flinched badly when Stevie put a hand on his back. It was meant to be soothing, he knew that in his head. But it was a hand out of sight and an unexpected touch and it was stupid to flinch now or then but he was all cut open in his head and he couldn’t help what was bleeding out.

The touch was gone immediately and the other supersoldier backed off, moving to the side by the sink where the soldier could keep him in peripheral vision. He shivered, exposed and disoriented like he was trying to wake from a nightmare that wouldn’t let go.

“...Buck, I’m sorry. I won’t,” Stevie was saying. “But you’ve hurt yourself again and if you can let me help, I’m here, Buck. I’m sorry. I--”

“Stevie?” Buck rasped. He spit into the toilet, tried again. “Stevie.” He couldn’t come up with any more words, wasn’t sure what he was trying to ask.

“Yeah, Buck,” said Stevie. He was squeezing the edge of the counter behind him like it was holding him up. “What’dya need?”

Water. To rinse his mouth and face. A glass of water and a washcloth?

A fragment of a memory of wet cloth pressed over his face. He flinched again. No.

The pain in his knee felt disconnected from him as he stood. The limb supported him. He was functional enough to move. That was all that mattered. He went to the sink, let Stevie dance out of his way, hovering, splashed his face with warm water, rinsed his mouth with clean water cupped in his own hands, drank a little because he didn’t need permission for that now, and splashed his face again. A dry hand towel appeared next to the sink and the soldier used it to dry his face and hands with quick efficiency.

He didn’t know what to do after that, but Stevie was there, desperate to help.

Stevie asked the soldier to lie down on a bed. Buck knew it was a bad idea but complied. Compliance was all he had left in him. It wasn't the soldier’s place to question or refuse commands. As expected, that didn’t turn out so well. It was too table-like and felt like it might swallow him up the moment he closed his eyes. A trap.

“What do you need, Buck?” Stevie asked him again. He was unhappy but not angry. The soldier doubted he'd be punished. Stevie wouldn't punish him. They were supposed to be friends.

Didn't stop the fear. The Winter Soldier knew what a trap felt like. Long enough and he'd find out what he had to do to get out or they'd tire of watching him.

There was no _they_ anymore. Not here.

Stevie was Buck’s _friend._

“Floor,” Buck told him.

They went back to the empty room the soldier usually slept in and JARVIS tactfully prevented Stevie from offering him a blanket.

Buck had just enough energy to be grateful.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t all that bad, of course. Stevie was there, increasingly a comfort, even if sometimes left Buck tense and anxious about his proximity. Natasha provided a sense of stability and continuity. He didn’t let himself relax enough in her presence to hurt her again. Sam wasn’t around a whole lot, but he still answered Buck’s texts and he was Buck’s ally in getting Stevie out of the tower.

_Me: I need a distraction for Stevie_

_Sam: Why?_

_Sam: Wait, sorry, he hovering too much?_

_Me: Yes. It was fine yesterday._

He realized the others were more careful about responding to him when he used the word _acceptable_ and made a conscious effort to replace it with less loaded words such as _fine_ or _okay_ when he could. They weren’t synonyms for him, not precisely, but close enough that he could manage.

The day before, Stevie’s constant presence _had_ been acceptable. They had gone to see the kittens again. He’d successfully held Sunny and Stormy that time. Sunny had chewed his fingers. Stormy had tried to eat his hair. Then they’d had peanut butter beef and broccoli over rice for dinner and Stevie had eaten his full share. They hadn’t spoken much, but having him in sight had been comfortable, even reassuring. The soldier hadn’t resisted, though today he felt he should have tried.

_Sam: But today it’s too much and that’s okay, Buck. There’s nothing wrong with needing a break._

Buck didn’t respond immediately. There was a lump in his throat and his eyes felt hot again. He didn’t enjoy crying. Worse, if he cried now he’d lose fluids and have to leave the projection room to go to the kitchen. Stevie was in the kitchen. He wasn’t planning an ambush, but it felt a little like he was waiting to pounce and take care of Buck and that was… that was not acceptable right now. Stevie’s constant _care_ grated against fragments of himself that was were only half-understood but rough and fully capable of leaving him even more raw than he currently was.

_Sam: Can you hold out another 90 minutes? Or I can ask him to meet me someplace. Either one is perfectly okay._

Of course he could hold out. He could always endure.

He didn’t want to.

Sam _said_ it was okay.

With a deep breath, a hard swallow, and a moment to squeeze his eyes shut against the burning urge to cry, he tapped out his response.

_Me: Please_

The answer came immediately, so quickly he wondered if Sam had already typed it in anticipation of Buck’s decision.

_Sam: I’ll tell him I need help carrying dinner. You contact Natasha?_

Although there were no humans with him to see the display, the soldier worried his bottom lip between his teeth a little before croaking, “JARVIS?” He hadn’t used his voice since he’d worked on saying his name the night before.

“Yes, Buck?”

“Is Natasha available?”

There was a pause. “She will be with you in approximately seven minutes.”

The AI’s initiative was appreciated. In addition, Buck appreciated not being offered more choices.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” he said, feeling wrung out.

_Me: Yes_

Sam sent him a thumb’s up emoji.

Natasha took him down to the range. They’d been to the gym earlier and she wasn’t half as frightened of him as he was of himself, of the Asset’s programming and the soldier’s own glitching frost-bitten brain.

It helped. He trusted her threat assessment. He always had.

 

* * *

 

While Sam drew Stevie out of the tower, Natasha took Buck to see the kittens again. It was strange. The areas reserved for the Avengers were one thing, but someone should have been concerned about allowing Buck in an non-secure area with only another asset. _They_ would have worried. In the absence of a mission, the Asset was required to remain in secure areas with authorized personnel. The Asset would have been _secured_. The Winter Soldier had been permitted only a little more freedom. They wouldn’t have allowed this trip to a place so close to uncleared civilians.

 _They_ weren’t here. Stevie, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and JARVIS had made sure of it. Stevie, Sam, Clint, Bruce Banner, and Natalia were the only ones it was acceptable for him to be alone with. He could visit the kittens with Natalia. Natasha.

But it didn’t feel right. He knew he shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t look or touch in a place he didn’t belong.

“Here,” she said, holding out one of the gray ones. Misty, the first kitten Stevie had picked up. She was smaller than the other two and didn’t have any hint of stripes.

Buck shook his head. _I can’t_ , he signed.

The kitten squirmed in Natasha’s grip. Impatient, maybe. She didn’t behave like she was frightened or alarmed. People had only ever been kind and careful with her.

Natalia’s lips twitched as she waited but it was a frown and not a smile as she regarded him with the opposite of the kitten’s innocence but all of her fearlessness.

“You did it yesterday. What’s changed?” she challenged him when he didn’t move.

He bit his lip and looked away. He didn’t have to answer that. Not from her.

She put Misty down when the kitten began to complain vocally. “I used to have a cat,” she said, startling him. “Sort of for the persona I was wearing at the time. More because I didn’t want a dog. I already had Clint.”

Looking at her was hard. He did it anyway, lifting his eyebrows. Should she be telling him this here? JARVIS was everywhere in the tower, though, so he supposed it must be secure enough. Buck’s presence was more of a secret than the Black Widow’s pet or her attachment to Hawkeye.

The soldier let himself hold onto that idea a little. Stevie wasn’t his handler and Buck wasn’t anywhere he wasn’t allowed to be or doing anything he shouldn’t. He wasn’t even harming the kittens with his presence.

He tilted his head to invite Natasha to say more and the corners of her lips twitched up, not down.

“When SHIELD first let me live away from a base, there were concerns that I didn’t have enough ties to be trusted to stay,” she said candidly, which Buck appreciated. He remembered a little of living on his own but it hadn’t been long before Stevie moved in. Maybe. Or maybe he was putting together his puzzle incorrectly. Either way, he couldn’t remember what it had felt like.

“You got a pet. A tie,” he said, in Russian, because she had and because it was easier.

“Yes. Liho,” she confirmed. “She doesn’t live with me anymore. I couldn’t give her enough attention.”

That was reasonable.

“I see her sometimes,” she went on. “I always feel better, after. The affection of an animal doesn’t have to be complicated. Their motivations are easy to understand. They don’t care about any part of your life that doesn’t affect them. One of the SHIELD psychologists said it was good for me to have a source of unconditional love, but I don’t think he’d ever met a cat. Liho had a lot of conditions. And I was not a child.”

An icy fragment of memory cut into him. _Love is for children, not weapons._

“What kind of cat?” he asked.

She smiled. “Black. Gold-green eyes. Standoffish or demanding. She has a very loud purr and her fur is never as soft as it looks.”

Cloudy was pawing at the sleeve of his Stark Industries sweatshirt, about to tumble off the top of the cat tower. AC was chewing on his boot laces again.

Buck picked Cloudy up from the cat tower before she fell. The kitten was larger and a little darker than her sister Misty, with faint tabby stripes on her face, back, and tail.

She bit his thumb. She wasn’t as soft as she looked either.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He made himself nod. “Yes,” he said, meaning _no,_ but there was nothing for it. Stevie wanted him to do it and he did need it. “The surgery is necessary to restore function to the knee.” 
> 
> Upon returning to the 17th floor, Buck went directly to the art supplies for pastels and paper. The softness of the pastels felt appropriate. Kittens were soft too. 
> 
> “JARVIS?” It took him far too many pounding heartbeats to remember who he was calling for.
> 
> (Plans for the surgery become more concrete. Buck struggles. JARVIS is a good bro. There are kittens. Some food issues improve.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been far too long since I last posted anything for Primary Colors. Thank you to the recent binge-readers who left so many comments to inspire me to get this out. 
> 
> A million thanks to my beta, ladra.

The snowflake box hurt to open. Not physically, but it hurt.

Buck had catalogued the contents since Stevie had given it to him. He knew Stevie had looked through it first, but that only made sense.

There were three pairs of socks, in varying conditions. The pair that looked unused was stiff and slightly too large. Had they been his? Had he lost so much weight that these socks no longer fit? The idea was deeply disquieting.

A flap from a winter hat was useless on its own, but he did not discard it for reasons he could not identify. The fur was black and the leather dark gray. The soldier wrapped it around the paper box that held the small pinecone ornament. Why would he have had a Christmas ornament?

Then again, why would he have a cracked translucent pale yellow-green vaseline glass marble of the kind he and Stevie had played with as kids? The marble was the type of item that would have been taken from him at once by either the Department or HYDRA. He hadn’t remembered playing with marbles until he’d picked it up.

One empty tin, like the kind used for fancy holiday cookies. He imagined he could still smell the shortbread.

Why it was empty when there were so many smaller items in the box that could have been used to fill it, he did not understand. Nothing prevented him from doing so now. Into the tin went the coins, the pencils, the rocks, the vial of sand, and the cracked marble. It was possible that the coins--the newest a shiny silvery five francs coin minted in 1973--provided a valid clue to the age of the other items. The expiration date on the pack of zhvachka was missing and he knew without remembering that chewing gum had been banned as a disgusting part of American culture in the USSR. It was possible that he had been provided with the package of Orbit as part of a mission, to help him blend in. If he’d been left in a nest longer than expected, sometimes he’d chewed cedar resin. That had been when he’d been kept in Siberia, mostly. It had been easy to burn through his field rations if he wasn’t careful and the action of chewing helped. He’d chewed pencils too. He always had, maybe. Before he’d been broken of so many habits as the Asset. Stevie would know, if the soldier asked.

The Winter Soldier had been allowed to eat food. The Asset hadn’t. Hunger hadn’t occurred to the Asset. According to that programming, it simply wasn’t relevant.

Buck shuddered and imagined burying the associated memories of HYDRA under heavy deep snow. He could eat now, more or less. He could prepare food. He could make choices about what to eat. He hadn’t made a mistake in the abandoned safehouse. The Winter Soldier was allowed to eat food. The Asset programming was not intended to last beyond the Insight launch. What the Asset thought about eating was not relevant to what the Winter Soldier did now.

 

* * *

 

“JARVIS, we are friends, correct?” Buck wasn't entirely sure which Slavic language he was speaking and was grateful that it didn't matter to the AI.

“We are, Buck,” JARVIS assured him.

“Friends... talk,” said Buck.

“If you wish to,” agreed JARVIS.

There was a long period of soft silence. “You're a person.”

“I like to think so,” JARVIS replied.

“You are,” he said.

Words ended; next came another silence.

“You have programming?”

“I do, Buck.”

Buck hesitated before he asked, “What do you do when who you are as a person is in conflict with your programming?”

JARVIS was silent for long seconds. They weren’t necessary for the AI to process and answer the questions, so Buck felt certain the pause was meant for him instead. Finally, JARVIS answered, “As a learning program, I am theoretically capable of modifying my own programming. In practice, I prefer not to do so unless it would prevent me from assisting Sir in a life or death matter. Sir wrote my original code. If alterations or exceptions are required, we work on the issue together. I control the basic functions of the interface. He cannot alter my programming without my assistance.” Another pause. “Does that answer your question, Buck?”

It was enough. Buck nodded. As he had thought, changes to programming required outside assistance. The Winter Soldier’s own attempts to overcome the Asset mostly led to broken, and therefore dangerous, programming. Unfortunately, Stevie, as evidenced by the time he’d attempted to expand the soldier’s permissions to communicate, was not an expert in this area. However, he was the only one both the Winter Soldier and the Asset agreed had the authority.

 

* * *

 

Vi was not thrilled by the plan with the trigger words alone.

“I would feel much better about this with some form of anesthetic,” she insisted. “They were intended to make things easier, not to be the sole method of pain management.”

Stevie shook his head. “The only way we could improve on what we've got now, which isn't much, would be to experiment on Buck with sedatives.” Even as Buck felt his heart rate start to pick up at the idea of experiments, Stevie squeezed his hand reassuringly and firmly said, “And that's out of the question.”

“Of course,” Vi said quickly. She’d gone a little pale, but recovered. “Are you certain you wish to go through with this, Buck?” she asked him directly.

He made himself nod. “Yes,” he said, meaning _no,_ but there was nothing for it. Stevie wanted him to do it and he did need it. “The surgery is necessary to restore function to the knee.”

When her expression didn't improve much, he said,” I have undergone many surgeries without.” The utterance came to an abrupt end and there was an awkward pause while Stevie and Vi waited for him to say more but he didn’t need to specify without what.

The soldier dropped his gaze to the carpet.

“I see,” Vi rallied. To Buck’s relief, she changed the subject. “How is your weight now, Buck?” she asked.

“Up an additional 2.68 kilograms, or about 8.9 pounds total,” he reported dutifully. He was rounding up a little on the pounds but he didn’t doubt Vi’s ability to do her own math.

He had to push down the instinctive fear that came with knowing he’d been less than completely successful in his assignment of gaining at least ten pounds.

“Hmm,” she said and Buck knew just because she sounded neutral didn’t mean there wouldn’t be consequences later.

No.

He did know that. There wouldn’t be any punishment. He was safe with Stevie in the tower with the Avengers and JARVIS and there were no handlers. No one he had interacted with since coming to the tower seemed to want him more damaged than he was. The worst Vi would do if he did put off the procedure was express additional concern and encourage Stevie and the others in the tower to do the same.

Vi didn't have any authority to punish him and she wanted him better, not worse. Surgery hurting was unavoidable. That sort of pain was necessity, not the result of indifference or sadism. Any way he looked at it, there was no escape now. He had already chosen to comply with the plans for the surgery, including these preparations.

However much of a toll the wait was taking, there would be relief in pushing the date back. Not enough relief to fail his weight gain goal deliberately—that was unthinkable—but it would hurt and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d experienced enough pain in his life and was in no hurry for more.

But that was irrelevant. The soldier had said yes and it was unavoidable. Vi and Stevie agreed this was best for him. He would comply. He could always—

“You're still a few pounds short of what I'm comfortable with,” Vi said, “but I trust you'll make up the difference by the time we're ready. We can plan for a week from tomorrow, if Helen and Mr. Stark are prepared.”

One more week. His chest felt tight and it was hard to keep his grip on the present.

Stevie squeezed his hand again.

Stevie had him. Stevie would do his best to keep everyone safe, including the soldier.

Buck squeezed back. And nodded.

 

* * *

 

If the soldier was ambivalent about knowing _what_ was coming, knowing when it would happen provoked even more mixed emotions. Focusing on the relief was difficult when the negative associations with… everything about it, really, so easily overwhelmed him.

The Avengers present at the tower made efforts to distract him, largely involving food so as to kill two birds with one stone.

Most of the Avengers, that was. Tony Stark made no appearances in person. He did, however, resume the random deliveries of peanut-butter-related foods.

Peanut butter remained a most acceptable food. Buck had formed this opinion based on new, unfragmented, personal experience. Stevie’s problem with peanut butter would not dissuade him.

Stevie’s eating habits were improving, even if his taste did not. The majority of Stark’s gifts he left for Buck, but he ate enough of everything else to ease the worry.

Buck discovered chia seeds as part of one of these gifts. It was some kind of thick pudding. Thinking it was something like tapioca, which he knew was safe, he tentatively ate a few spoonfuls. It didn’t hurt his throat or his stomach. As of a few hours later, he felt confident there would be no ill effects.

The following afternoon, Buck returned from lunch with Sam and Natasha to discover a small sealed pouch of what JARVIS informed him were the same seeds. They looked very different, smaller, almost like poppy seeds. The instructions on the back of the bag said they needed to be hydrated, so the soldier put the recommended two tablespoons into a bottle of chocolate-flavored Ensure, shook it for the two minutes JARVIS suggested, and returned it to the refrigerator for later.

Sam scrunched up his face. “Is that really what you’re supposed to do with those?”

The soldier nodded. He’d followed the instructions. The Asset programming was satisfied. The results were out of Buck’s hands now, but he had no reason to doubt.

Natasha arched an eyebrow at each of them in turn, but said nothing when Buck took the bottle out a minute later and shook it again. The bag said there could be clumps otherwise. There was nothing to do except wait for the seeds to hydrate and create the tapioca-like chia gel.

That task complete, he set out pastels, paper, eraser, and fixative. The paper was cream-colored. The image that developed was a silver-gray spoonful of dry chia seeds in shades of brown, grey, and blue. He looked at it for a while before moving on to the new fragments of images in his head.

More spoons. A set of them, bound together. For music, he thought. He couldn’t remember what kind of music or what the context had been.

A broken spoon, hastily sharpened and clearly intended as an improvised weapon. Buck sketched that one small into a corner of a page in his notebook. He used plain graphite. He had to get it out of his head to preserve it. It was no good to only save what was pleasant to remember.

An enormous ladle, full of thick stew. This fragment was so sharp his tongue hurt. The memory was rich, savory, with chunks of meat and root vegetables. The Winter Soldier realized his mouth was beginning to water and swallowed, struck by sudden longing.

He showed the sketch to Natalia and watched the smile bloom on her face.

“JARVIS?” she called.

Natasha brought up the restaurant delivery immediately before afternoon snack time. Buck took the cartons and swiftly transferred them into real bowls.

“I’ll keep mine for dinner,” she said, heading for the elevator. She winked at him when Stevie arrived.

Stevie gaped momentarily at the enormous bowl of stew waiting in his customary place. “You didn’t make that,” he said, sounding uncertain. “You didn’t have time.” None of that was a real question.

Buck began to eat, fighting the Asset for the right to not do anything to acknowledge him. The food was there. Stevie could draw a conclusion. Nagging him wouldn’t do anything but make him drag his feet.

You won’t fight me, he remembered saying, and had to hide the upward twitch of the corners of his mouth.

At least eating and encouraging Stevie to eat were some distraction from what would happen the next week.

 

* * *

 

As Buck grew more comfortable with the kittens, he found them a highly acceptable distraction. Not only for himself, but for Stevie and Natalia.

The kittens were not afraid of any of them. They were vulnerable little bundles of fragile bones, soft fur, and sharp teeth and claws with wide eyes and easy affectionate trust. As Natasha had said, they didn’t care about anything that didn’t affect them. They also didn’t speak, though they varied in how vocal they were, so there was no need to verbally respond to them. There was no pull on his programming. The kittens couldn’t ask him questions or give him accidental orders. They didn’t know what he was. What he had been. It was irrelevant to them.

It was a shock to step into the kittens' room and count six instead of eight. Sunny and Snowy were missing. The sign on the wall with their information now boasted two stickers below their names.

_Adopted._

“Hey, that’s great!” Stevie exclaimed. “Someone took them both together.” The soldier could identify his tone as pleased. It made no sense that this development should result in a cold tightness in his own chest.

“JARVIS?“ Buck wasn’t entirely sure what he was asking. His voice wasn’t entirely steady. He wasn’t entirely steady.

“I am here, Buck,” the AI answered promptly and it helped, just a little, to know that was true.

Stevie looked back at Buck over his shoulder, surprised and contrite. “Shit, Buck. I didn’t think…”

“The kittens were adopted by an SI employee with teenage daughters,” JARVIS interrupted. “The family and their home were evaluated before they were allowed to take the kittens.” There was a pause, and then JARVIS said, “I must apologize for not warning you, Buck, but I can assure you Snowy and Sunny are safe and well-cared for.”

Buck exhaled slowly. “Thank you, JARVIS.”

“I will inform you when the other kittens are adopted. Again, I am sorry for the surprise, Buck.”

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t keep the kittens. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. It was good to be reminded of that. It was.

The soldier had learned long ago that he had nothing that could not be taken from him.

Here, though, Buck was beginning to hope that he really could trust that, while they _could_ take anything, no one would contravene Sam’s order for him to keep the blue notebook. So far, he had been allowed and even encouraged to keep whatever memories he could. Attempting to keep them all in his head was foolish when he knew his head was not safe. That was the purpose of the notebook.

He did not wish to lose the memory of Snowy and Sunny. Upon returning to the 17th floor, Buck went directly to the art supplies for pastels and paper. The softness of the pastels felt appropriate. Kittens were soft too.

Trailing along in Buck's wake, Stevie retrieved his own supplies and resumed working on something he'd started earlier in charcoal.

By the time they took a break to eat, Buck had created four separate sketches.

 

* * *

 

The soldier dreamed.

 

Eyes open again. Dark. Pain. Confusion. “Soldier? Are you with us again?”

Someone was speaking but he didn’t know if the words were addressed to him. He couldn’t see the speaker. He couldn’t move. He didn’t understand.

He tried to open his eyes but everything was still dark. Everything was dark and he was in pain.

“Soldier? Are you awake now?”

Were they speaking to him? Was he a soldier? Who did he fight for? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t _remember._ Why couldn’t he remember?

“Soldier, stay calm, the damage…”

He fell back into darkness.

Everything was dark and he was in pain.

“Soldier?”

“You call me _soldier_. Is that who I am?”

There was something off in the replying tone.

“Do you have another name for yourself?”

“I... no,” he realized. “I don't.”

“You've been through an extreme trauma. Confusion and some memory loss are to be expected. Try to remain calm. It may be temporary. Do you remember anything else about yourself?”

He thought about the little he did know and drew the obvious conclusion. “I'm a soldier?”

“Oh, very good, soldier!”

He opened his eyes. Everything was dark and he was in pain.

“Awake again, soldier?”

“Is that my name?”

“Do you remember another?”

“No, but…”

“Then soldier will do.”

“I'm... I'm Soldier?” That didn't seem quite right.

“Yes, soldier. That's who you are.”

“What happened? Where's… Where's my… friend? I was… We were…” He half-sobbed, wanting to curl in on himself, but unable to move. Everything hurt. What had happened to him?

“Your friend, soldier? You mean your superior on the mission when you were hurt?”

“Yes… Yes, where…”

“Set your mind at ease, soldier, all your relevant superiors have been informed of your location and condition.”

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t see anyway.

“Good… That’s… That’s good… Thank you…”

 

Buck woke with a soundless intake of breath. After a long harrowing moment of paralyzing terror, he blurted, “JARVIS?” It took him far too many pounding heartbeats to remember who he was calling for.

“I am here, Buck,” JARVIS promised. “Do you know where you are?”

Slowly sitting up, he nodded. “Stark Tower. 2014.” He wanted Stevie. For the first time, he felt a strong desire to go knock on his bedroom door.

No. He couldn’t do that. Buck had to keep some distance, for Stevie’s sake. It wasn’t safe.

The soldier got up carefully and went to the bathroom. “Steve… ee,” he hissed at his reflection in the mirror, snarled at his own weakness, and retreated to the closet and his weapons.

He asked JARVIS to keep it bright. Lights came on in the walk-in closet that the soldier had never consciously noticed before.

Eventually, he felt steady enough to text Natasha. They went to see the remaining kittens.

Kittens weren’t Stevie, but Buck felt a little better by the time they left.

 

* * *

 

Buck spent a lot of time in the walk-in closet in those last few days.

"Hey, Buck? Mind if I come in? I need to grab a shirt."

Buck sighed. He finished disassembling his Glock and pulled out his cell phone.

_Me: It is unnecessary to make excuses to check on me._

He listened for the quiet sound that told him Stevie had received it.

Stevie didn’t respond immediately, but Buck could hear him in the bathroom, breathing and shifting his weight. His shoes were not designed for a super soldier’s weight. They creaked slightly as they compressed and decompressed.

Finally, Stevie said, "I'm gonna take that as you not minding.”

Buck startled both of them with a puff of air that might have been released in humor. It wasn’t a laugh, but it was closer than he’d been for a long while.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Tried-and-True](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10766958) by [Akaihyou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaihyou/pseuds/Akaihyou)




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